How to attend mass with Pope Francis

Most Catholics who visit Rome would like to have the opportunity to attend a mass celebrated by the pope, but under normal circumstances, the opportunities to do so are very limited. On important holy days, including Christmas, Easter and Pentecost Sunday, the Holy Father will celebrate a public mass in St. Peter's Basilica or in St. Peter's Square, if time permits. On those occasions, anyone who arrives early enough can participate; but outside of these public masses, the opportunity to participate in a mass celebrated by the pope is very limited.

Or at least it was.

Since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has celebrated daily Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican pension where the Holy Father has chosen to live (at least for the moment). Various employees of the Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy, reside in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, and the visiting clergy often remain there. Those residents, both more or less permanent and temporary ones, formed the congregation for the Masses of Pope Francis. But there are still empty spaces in the benches.

Janet Bedin, a parishioner from the church of St. Anthony of Padua in my hometown of Rockford, Illinois, wondered if she could fill one of those empty places. As reported by the Rockford Register Star on April 23, 2013,

Bedin sent a letter to the Vatican on April 15 asking if he could attend one of the Pope's masses the following week. It was a long blow, he said, but he had heard of the small morning masses that the Pope had held to visit Vatican priests and employees and wondered if he could receive an invitation. The 15th anniversary of his father's death was Monday, he said, and he couldn't think of an honor greater than that of participating in his memory and that of his mother, who died in 2011.

Bedin felt nothing. So on Saturday, he received a phone call with instructions to be at the Vatican at 6:15 am on Monday.
The congregation was small on April 22 - only about 35 people - and after Mass, Bedin had the opportunity to meet the Holy Father face to face:

"I didn't sleep at all the night before," Bedin said by telephone from Italy on Monday afternoon. “I kept thinking about what I was going to say. . . . This was the first thing I ended up saying to him. I said, 'I haven't slept at all. I felt like I was 9 and it was Christmas Eve and I was waiting for Santa Claus' ".
The lesson is simple: ask and you will receive. Or at least, you can. Now that Bedin's story has been published, the Vatican will no doubt be inundated with the demands of Catholics who wish to attend mass with Pope Francis, and it is unlikely that everyone can be granted.

If you are in Rome, however, it cannot hurt to ask.